In return for the huge amount of work Flickr users do to tag photos on the popular
photo-sharing site, they should get the benefit of the algorithms the service uses to bring meaning to the data.
That's how at least some at Flickr feel, according to Kakul Srivastava, the service's director of product management said in her talk, "The next generation of tagging: Searching and discovering a better user experience," at the Web 2.0 Expo here Thursday.
The idea behind that theory is that as Flickr users proactively add tags to countless millions of photos stored on the site, the service is able to draw some very specific conclusions about the behavior of those users and the things that are happening around them.
"It's an incredible amount of content to parse, to reveal, and to take the meaning of," Srivastava said.
Unfortunately, I would have to say that the talk didn't deliver on its title: Srivastava didn't share anything particularly new with the audience, discussing mainly things that were probably already well-understood by most in the room.
Still, it was an interesting presentation, particularly because Srivastava talked about some of the ways that Flickr has evolved over the years, and what it's possible to learn based on how it's grown.
One of the most notable changes has been what she termed the increasing sophistication in the way Flickr users tag photos.
At first, she suggested, people were mainly tagging photos to add context about themselves. Then, gradually, they added context about other people, and then found ways to express shared experiences through their tags.
The best example of that--though more complex than what most people get involved in--is Flickr's The Commons project.
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